Chinese Standard Movement
From Chinese Watch Industry Wiki
History of the Chinese Standard (统机) Movement
By the late 1960s the Chinese watch industry had matured, with good quality and quantity of output from those factories in operation. To build upon this, the 4th Five Year Plan called for a program of 'consolidation' for the industry, in which a standardized watch design would be manufactured in factories in (almost) all provinces. Thus the Chinese Standard (统机 Tongji =‘Unified’) movement was borne.
The prototype SZ-1 was developed by a design group formed by engineers from many units, and was under the Light Industry Ministry. The project commenced in 1969 under the guidance of the Ministry for Light Industry, drawing upon the resources of Shanghai Watch & Clock Industry Company, Shanghai Watch Factory, Shanghai 2nd Watch Factory, Tianjin Watch & Clock Factory, Beijing, Liaoning, Guangzhou & XiAn HongQi Watch Factories, XiAn FengLai Meters & Watch Company, together with the Watch & Clock Research Team of Ministry of Light industry XiAn, and the technicians and scholars of Timing instruments of Tianjin University. The group studied many foreign watch designs, and combined merits of them for the prototype SZ-1. It has least parts compared to other similar movements, so that it was easier to produce and service, while at the same time maintaining high accuracy and reliability. The basic specification of the Standard wristwatch calibre is; a minimum of 17 jewels, 21,600bph escapement, a minimum of 40 hours power reserve and average rate within +/-30seconds per day. Blueprints were finalized in November 1971.
The resultant design most closely resembles the Enicar AR1010, found in one of the limited range of Swiss watches sold in China at that time, however there is no evidence of Enicar involvement in the SZ-1 project. A substantially larger version of the same design, designated HJ1A, was developed by the Jilin Watch Factory for use in pocket-watches.
Shanghai Number 2 Watch Factory’s Baoshihua brand was the first Standard watch in production. The first batch actually bore the SZ-1 designation, before the factory-specific ZSE was introduced. Other early examples were the Beijing Number 1 Watch Factory ZB-1 (20 jewels), and the Shanghai Watch Factory SS7 (19 jewels).
Most other existing watch factories were required to shift production to the new Standard movement with a few notable exceptions. The Shanghai Stopwatch Factory continued production of the high-grade SM1A, the Tianjin Watch Factory was permitted to continue production of the ST5, and the Nanjing Watch Factory continued their budget Zongzhan SN-2 watch.
Once production of the new watch was established in existing factories, many new factories were built also to make the standard watch. In most factories the complete watch was manufactured in-house, thus the required skills and technologies were distributed more widely across the nation. By the end of the 1970s there were more than 30 complete watch manufacturing enterprises in China; and possibly as many as 50.
The basic product was man-sized hand-winding watch without date. As factories developed additional capacity, mid-sized watches were added as well as date and occasionally day-date function. Such calendar functions may vary from one factory to another as they were generally proprietary developments. A few factories even developed automatic versions. The first such Standard automatic in production was the Beijing SZB-1C Shuangling with 40 jewels. Also of note was the high-grade 33 jewel Jing Tie (Beijing Railways) automatic from the Liaoning Watch Factory. As with calendars, auto-winding modules were also proprietary, with Eterna-type double-reverser, ball-jewel clutch double reversers, and single reverser types being used by various factories.
The higher-grade factories made 19 jewel versions of the hand-winding Standard movement. The extra jewels are always added to the mainspring barrel, reflecting the Chinese priority of durability. This is in contrast to Swiss practice where extra jewels are added usually starting with cap-jewels on the escape-wheel.
The changes to economic policy in the 1980s, particularly regarding imports and exports, (coinciding as it did with the rapid expansion of global quartz watch production) had a significant impact on the Standard watch. The Shanghai Watch and Stopwatch factories collaborated on a thinner, more refined replacement for the Standard, known variously as SS8, SB1H or simply the B. Other factories developed low-grade automatic movements based on small movements originally designed for women's watches. Privatization, factory closures and the return of Hong Kong to China all helped to topple the Standard watch from its dominant position. Other more modern mechanical movements have arisen to take its place, such as the Sea-Gull ST16, Nanning NN28 and Hangzhou 2000.
The best vintage examples of Standard watches include Shanghai, Chunlei (Shanghai), Shuangling (Beijing), Polaris (Yantai) and Xihu (Hangzhou). Shijiazhuang Watch Factory made some higher grade watches for military and railway use with a brand name of Taihang.
Standard calibre codes are generally three characters prefixed by Z (Zhonggou = China) followed by two characters for the factory e.g. ZHZ = Hangzhou, ZSH = Shanghai, ZDL = Dalian, etc.
Current Standard movement production
Currently the Standard movement lives on in skeletonized hand-winding versions, some simple automatic versions, and a steadily declining output of the basic version. Most automatic and skeleton versions now lack any meaningful factory identification marks. The quality has degraded significantly on most Standard movements compared to the 1970s, especially on the skeleton versions which are sold extremely cheaply and are disliked by watchmakers. In spite of its excellent design, the Standard movement now has a poor reputation for reliability and generally it deserves it.
However, even at this late stage new variants continue to be developed. The effort involved in such work is an encouraging sign that good quality Standard movements will continue to be available from at least a few sources. Liaoning Watch Factory is producing a new automatic distinguishable by a wider auto-winding bridge that partly covers the mainspring barrel. This has also been seen in combination with a skeleton base movement with a more elaborate cut and decoration than most Standard skeletons. LWF may also be responsible for a new Standard-based open-heart movement, in which the balance has been relocated to the dial side. All of these variants have been enthusiastically adopted by the many new lower-priced Shenzhen-based brands such as Fineat. In 2008 the Liaocheng Watch Company introduced a new skeleton version on a 33mm main plate with a simple auto-winding module on the 'magic-lever' principle. This movement is sold by PTS Resources.
Interestingly the Shanghai watch industry never quite abandoned the Standard. It lives on in automatic form alongside the B calibre powering some of Shanghai's myriad calendar complication and dual time models.
Significance of the Standard movement
The project to establish the Standard watch aimed to make a steel-cased 17 jewel watch available to, and within the means of, almost any worker in a vast developing nation with a population greater than any other on earth. This aim was met, which was an amazing achievement. The often elaborate case-backs and signed crowns of many vintage Standard watches are a testimony to the pride of the local enterprises that built them.
The distributed production of a standard design via a vertically-integrated business model, i.e. a single enterprise building the whole watch, has provided a foundation of skills and technology on which the modern Chinese watch industry is built. With greater international market competition has emerged a greater horizontal integration in the industry, but this is possible only due to the skills and technology already in place.
The very fact that the Standard movement is ‘standard’ ensures its ubiquity even as it slides towards the lower end of the price range. Low-end brands can confidently source movements from the lowest possible tenderer knowing they with fit the cases, hands and dials that they have sourced from elsewhere. An example of this is pseudo-Russian brand Слава Созвездие (Slava Sozvezdie), whose glass-backed watches reveal Standard movements with a surprising diversity of manufacturer’s marks.
On any day there are thousands of Standard movement watches for sale on ebay and in shopping malls throughout the developed world. If you collect mechanical watches in the lower price-bracket, sooner or later you will own one, whether you intended to or not!
